Open letter to Border Roads Organization

It is May the 7th, what better day to write to you than today, your foundation day. This day in 1960, the Border Roads Organization (BRO) was established.
July last year, I got a chance to make a trip of the lifetime, a trip to Leh. The trip only happened because we were able to book airline tickets with the prices almost on the floor.

At the very outset, I must say, hats off! You are doing what people wouldn’t dare to do in their most adventurous of dreams. It doesn’t just take skill but enormous courage to create roads where none should exist. For more than 60% of the commuters on the roads in Leh, it’s difficult to even look down, I can’t even imagine what building them must have been. To be honest, I don’t know what you guys are up to in the rest of India, but project Himank and project Vijayak are a different ball game which a private player wouldn’t be able to play. This is for the men in uniform only.
Creating roads, is just one bit and you didn’t stop there, keeping them going in rains, snow and landslides, is godly. Prodigious sons of the motherland, you. The most treacherous of the landslides could engage you only for a few hours at best. In an adventure on the verge of a total misadventure, I took the Wari La pass road to get back to Leh from Pangong and I was surprised, surprised to find the men of your fraternity clearing the almost uninhibited and rarely traversed the route. A convoy of almost 30-35 bikers couldn’t stop themselves from raising the hands to salute the man operating the bulldozer. The happiness, pride and joy on the face of that guy was magical. Maybe that’s the only food that keeps you going in terrains like these. I am almost certain that you people possess supernatural powers, making your dozers and blasting machines ready before the boulders could even make up their mind to fall. I don’t think that any amount of money could make you do this, only total devotion and complete allegiance to the tri-color would make it possible.

One of the BRO roads, in its full glory.
And with your crazy roadside slogans you steal the show with that sense of humor. I’ll share some of them; hope they don’t offend the right wingers around.

Words of WisdomUh Well. Caption says it all.

Though Khardungla is talked about too much yet I would like to recognize again, the hard-work and the guts that it takes to create the world’s highest motor-able road at more than 18000ft above the sea level.

Just standing there, we felt as if we conquered the world.

I am sure you people are on your job, as I write this, building and maintaining roads on the toughest terrains of the world, conquering our hearts and giving us critical infrastructure that the enemy forces would envy. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for doing your job so well.

BRO as an organization has helped not just Indians travel the toughest terrains of India, but have extended their services to even our neighbour Bhutan.
Kudos to their courage and dedication in connecting such places to the masses.